Education is broken — but this entrepreneur has a stunningly simple idea to fix it

A former hedge fund analyst pointed out a crippling flaw in the
US education system during a
live TED Talk in New York City in November.

Salman Khan, also a founder of the free education resource
Khan Academy,
says we force students to move ahead when they aren't ready.

But he has a solution.

"We shouldn't drag everyone around at the same pace," Khan told
the audience. Instead, he says, we should take inspiration from
martial arts teaching.

Suppose a student gets a 75% on a test, which is a passing grade.
Khan says this means the student didn't learn 25% of the
material, yet they're expected to move on to the next lesson with
the rest of the class.

The problem with this, he says, is the next block of material
builds on what the student was supposed to learn in the last
lesson, and it's usually more difficult to pick up. So a student
learns only 75% of the material, we can't expect that student to
master the next section.

You can see how this effect could quickly snowball as a student
works their way up through more advanced classes. If students
don't master all of algebra, for example, they'll have
significant knowledge gaps when trying learn calculus.

Khan says we assume they are bad at math, or born without the
"math gene," and so they'll give up on the class.

In reality, they're not bad at math — they just didn't master the
foundation material, he said.

Which is why Khan argues we shouldn't drag everyone through
school at the same pace. The education system should work
the same way as martial arts or mastering a musical instrument,
he says: Practice your white belt skills until they're
perfect, then move up to the yellow belt; practice the beginner
piece until you nail it, then move on to the more advanced song;
don't move onto calculus if you haven't mastered algebra and
trigonometry.

A lot of
research out there backs up Khan's idea. Students that don't
move onto the next lesson until they master the first often
perform better later in their education career than peers who are
arbitrarily shoved along from grade to grade.

If we personalize the education experience for students instead
of requiring them to move as a herd, then anyone "could become a
physicist, or a cancer researcher, or a rocket scientist," Khan
said.

Provided, of course, that they put in the work required to master
all of the steps.